ABSTRACT
Having owned the pain of the dominant consciousness and having plumbed the Christian community’s memories of its past, two things remain. First, the coding of the alternative discourse must be affirmed. This chapter draws together the work of chapters 6–8 to demonstrate that the formulation of friendship language does accurately code the telos and praxis of incarnational ecclesial leadership. Second, in a fourth and final movement, those practices of hope by which the community might embody its own prophetic imaginings are named. Specifically, form and content is given to the concept of friendship-leadership praxis: treating leadership influence through the lens of power, the chapter considers not only the practicalities of power-exercise but also the implications upon such a praxis of the existence of differentials in power. The chapter begins, also, to trace the arc of imagination beyond the initial project: having articulated leadership in terms of activity, what might these proposals mean for how power is structured within churches?
